Machines 'not something to be feared'

Computer that beat Go champion has many applications, says its maker.A little chalkboard sits on the reception desk of DeepMind’s office in London’s gentrified King’s Cross. On it is scrawled: AlphaGo – 4, Lee Sedol – 1. Nearby in the lobby, a big-screen TV is flashing the words: Welcome back AlphaGo Team!But that is about as far as one can tell that the London company has just come home triumphant after making history last week by trouncing Go world champion Lee Se Dol with its supercomputer, AlphaGo.Perhaps the team already knew they were going to win the best-of- five epic showdown between man and machine in Seoul. Engineers had been testing AlphaGo against older versions of itself so they could get an estimate of how strong the machine was -…